Saturday, January 29, 2011

When imperialism has expended itself in the world, it starts to feed on itself. The war against nature and people is intensified at home.

Dallas Darling writes at World News:

At the outset of The Great Depression, General Douglass MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, observed millions of homeless Americans sleeping on sidewalks and attending "hunger marches." He witnessed food riots and angry farmers resisting foreclosures and brutal evictions. And yet, General MacArthur used these injustices to validate building an even stronger military. He used such incidences and injuries against his fellow citizens to justify a greater military presence. ...

The Bonus Army consisted of World War I veterans who were promised a small sum for their military service. Since their families were hungry and homeless, they had marched to Washington in an attempt to ask President Hoover and the Congress for their bonuses. When Congress denied their funds, and when President Hoover refused to meet with them, 30,000 veterans occupied vacant buildings and camped outside of Washington in tents and shacks.

MacArthur ordered the encampment to be burned to the ground. With bristling guns and tanks, with fixed bayonets and teargas, and with raised sabers, the American infantrymen and cavalry attacked the Bonus Army marchers and set fire to the camp. In doing this, MacArthur had hoped to show President Hoover, Congress, and the rest of America, of the importance of a strong military force. He wanted to prove too Congress that military funding needed to be increased for security reasons, even while Americans were hungry.

Instead, a nine-month old baby and mother lay dead, as did two Bonus Army marchers. At first, General MacArthur believed the news press would back him. It did not. Images of ragged veterans being assaulted presented a ugly picture to most Americans. In order to save his career and keep the U.S. Army from being shamed, he bullied President Hoover into taking the blame for this enormous debacle. In the name of militarism, not only had General MacArthur usurped the President's powers, but the jurisprudence of the police district.

Still, and in the name of increased military funding and expansion, General MacArthur had crushed a popular movement and completely destroyed basic human rights. Instead of an external or foreign military operation, he implemented an internal and domestic one. It was pure military power for economic and psychological gains against American citizens, a kind of reversed imperialism. The U.S. Army itself became an end in itself. Unlike the Red Scare, which caused mass hysteria in regards to Communism, the Security Scare was an insidious strategy for the purpose of allocating more public funds for militarism. ...

Compared to what the top twenty-five nations spend on their armies (combined!), America still spends more each year. MacArthurism is felt when social, education and unemployment benefits are cut, but more weapons systems and wars are funded.

MacArthurism is the new House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Representative Buck McKeon, who warned that any cuts in the military and Pentagon's budget would be drastic and dangerous to American security. It is claiming that the U.S. needs to continue funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that China and the Soviet Union are still viable threats. The Pentagon and its vast media empire spreads MacArthurism when they espouse the same kind of Security Scare rhetoric as mentioned above, in order to expand their military power, absolute control and wealth. ...

The crisis at the door step, as Gates called it, is not a $23 billion shortfall for the Pentagon and its wasteful and parasitic military complex. It is MacArthurism, or the reliance on, and continued support of, military power and perpetual wars. It is a battle fought over America's existing and ever declining wealth and it's human and national resources. It is an internal battle fought for the hearts and minds of Americans. Unless they realize they have been outmaneuvered and marginalized by MacArthurism, their fates will tragically be like those of the Bonus Army marchers.